Craig Breslow Shares Why Red Sox Made Surprisingly Successful Yankees Trade

The most memorable trade the Boston Red Sox made this offseason, far and away, was the Garrett Crochet blockbuster with the Chicago White Sox.

However, on the same day, a little over four hours later, the Red Sox called up their arch-rivals, the New York Yankees. Or maybe the Yankees called them, perhaps, because they saw an obvious hole the Red Sox had and wanted to exploit it.

Because the Red Sox had given up top prospect Kyle Teel in the deal with Chicago, they were short on catchers. The Yankees sent them Carlos Narváez, who was little more than a third or fourth-stringer in New York at the time, for minor-league right-handed pitcher Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz.

Narváez won the competition in spring training to be Connor Wong's backup. But now he's won the starting job too, having started nine of the last 12 games even with Wong fully healthy. And he's also been excelling on both sides of the ball.

Earlier this week, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow touted Narváez as a trade acquisition, coming off a great series against the New York Mets that was highlighted by a solo home run to break a scoreless tie in Tuesday night's 2-0 win.

“By all accounts, it’s been a huge success,” said Breslow, per Sean McAdam of MassLive. “Obviously, it’s still really early, but we’re very, very excited about what he’s been able to do. And at least as important to what we’re seeing on the field is how quickly he acclimated to Boston and the way he invests and works with the pitching staff.”

Narváez was expected to be a good defender, but his offense has been far better than expected. He's got a .279/.343/.459 slash line, giving him 1.8 bWAR on the season, which leads all American League rookies, regardless of position.

“All the information that we had on him told us that he was a really good defensive catcher, and he’s been even better than we thought," Breslow said. "But he had a very strong reputation as being a great framer, a great blocker. We’ve seen that. And the throwing’s really improved.

“We didn’t know what we’d get on the offensive side. We felt like there was some upside and he’s worked really, really hard on that. So he deserves a ton of credit there.”

Narváez will look to keep things rolling (and embarrassing the Yankees) as the Red Sox open the four-game set with the Baltimore Orioles with two games on Friday.